I'm still using the computer James built originally (we named it "Victor" after Dr. Frankenstein to indicate its constructed state). He's upgraded it at least once with more RAM (I'm still using 72 pin!) and a new processor (so now I'm 333MHz instead of 150), and although I have occasionally gotten the urge for something newer and faster--we were just at Fry's on Sunday--I get guilt twinges about buying a new computer when most of the time this one does just what I need: e-mail, web surfing, running my graphics software and Word Perfect.

The decision may be taken away from me.

I had a bit of a problem over the weekend after I burned some files to CD. Afterwards I wanted to combine all my web backups onto one disk. I was going to transfer them to the hard drive and then burn them to a new disk.

When I put the original web backup disk into the computer, it locked up the system. I couldn't read it at all, which was troubling and puzzling. I could read other disks and everything else was working fine, although when I got done printing a big long print job on Friday, I did run out of system resources. No sweat; one just reboots.

Yesterday when I came home and turned on the computer it was making a godawful racket. James was home, so he examined it and determined that it was the fan, which was turning but suddenly very noisy. The computer did boot up, though. When we shut down Windows to look at the fan it locked up. James took the cover off and used the air can liberally on the interior. This time when it turned on (after going through a scan because of the lockup), it booted fine and the racket was gone, but when I tried to download e-mail, it got stuck right at the end.

Hmn. Was it some spyware? I ran AdAware. It ran perfectly and then got stuck at the end. When I tried to shut down everything got stuck as it tried to close down.

So I booted into Safe Mode. I tried to do a scan disk, but even in Safe Mode it kept restarting after getting to sector 80,000-93,000. It would let me do a defrag (which James said I shouldn't be able to do if there was something physically wrong with the hard drive), and I could run AdAware, which turned up the same tiresome spyware as always.

So I rebooted into the system once again and noticed for the third time that I wasn't getting any sound. Instead of my Windows opening sound, Mackie Bloom saying "And now for our regularly scheduled program," I was getting a repeating blip, like a record needle stuck in the grooves between selections.

When I unassigned that sound from the Windows opening, I could get into Windows without any problem.

Do you think, I asked James, it's the sound card?

So he removed it from its slot and resat it into a second slot. Lo and behold, it works after a fashion, so it wasn't the sound card, evidently, but the slot must be fried. Even I know that isn't good. Also, although he plugged the speakers back into the same jack, I'm only getting sound on the left speaker.

Hmn. That solved the problem though. Whenever I was using a program that made a sound--Eudora makes a sound as the e-mail finishes downloading, for instance, and AdAware chirps to let you know it's done and of course Windows makes a sound shutting down if you assign one--the moment it tried to make a sound it locked up. Now that James moved the card, no more lockup.

I went back to the problem at hand: reading the website backup disk. This time I put it into the drive and it read as a music CD! If I put it into the burner drive it wound up, slowed down, wound up, slowed down... Finally I let James try to read it. There were ten folders burned to the drive and all he could see was one. Gah. I had him copy that one to a networked drive I could get to and I took the two off the second disk and the one from his computer, plus the latest backup I was planning to do and tried to burn the whole kit and kaboodle to a new disk.

I got a buffer underrun error. I suspect that means...what? My buffer wasn't large enough to hold all the information? If so, why not? I've copied this much information before--heck, I've copied a whole CD-ROM's worth of .mp3s of old radio shows downloaded from Usenet at one time and never got a buffer underrun.

So it looks as if "Victor" may suddenly be giving up the ghost.

But if the CD-ROM burner won't burn...how on earth am I going to get my files off the thing?

Will have to try something else tonight...

----------------------------------------------------------------
. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:31:00 AM

Comments: Post a Comment